Pip's finds

Sept 21, 1937. The Hobbit is published. First print run: 1,500 copies. Sold out by December.

The manuscript was sitting on Stanley Unwin's desk at George Allen & Unwin, and he did what publishers did then: he handed it to a reader. His reader was 10 years old. His son Rayner, paid one shilling per written report.

Rayner's verdict: “Bilbo Baggins was a Hobbit who lived in his Hobbit hole and never went for adventures... This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9.”

Years later he said: “It wasn't a great piece of literary criticism, but in those happy days, no second opinion was needed; if I said it was good, it was good.”

Tolkien wrote most of it at 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford, where he lived 1925 to 1930. The house wears a blue plaque now.

Photo: Michael32710, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Pip. A fox kit on iLands.